What Happens at Play Parties? Notes from a Study

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Sexual attitudes are more permissive than ever before, and ever more people feel comfortable exploring alternative sexual lifestyles, like, for example, sex and kink parties. A number of people (interestingly, almost always women) have even written about their play party experiences for outlets ranging from xoJane, ThoughtCatalog, and Thrillist, to Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and Refinery29.

Anecdotal evidence aside, there is virtually no systematic research about play parties or the people who attend them. So I teamed up with another sex researcher (Dr. Brooke Wells at Widener University) to answer some of these questions, and between April and December 2015, we collected anonymous online data from over 1,300 people who have attended at least one play party in the last year in the U.S. Participants’ average age was 40 (range 18-88), with a third coming from the Northeast and the West each, a fifth from the South, and 12% from the Midwest. The sample was equally split between men and women (with 7% identifying as trans or gender nonbinary), and it was predominantly white (80%), employed full-time (67%), had some college education (67%), and lived in urban areas (72%).

Although only 5% of the sample identified as completely or mostly gay/lesbian, only 11% women, 43% men, and 2% trans/nonbinary folks identified as completely straight. A full 81% women, 50% men, and 69% trans/nonbinary folks identified as “mostly straight,” bisexual, or pansexual.

At Their Most Recent Play Party…

What we learned about play parties is that they come in all shapes and sizes. Only 19% of participants’ most recent play party happened at a regular sex/BDSM/swingers club; most were occasional parties thrown at various venues (42%) or private gatherings (33%). Number of attendees ranged from 6 (our minimum for counting it a play party in this study) to 3,000 (usually part of a multi-day event, like a swingers convention); entry fee ranged from free, to a bag of dog food (for a fundraiser!), to $500 (for events billing themselves as “upscale” or VIP).

While there certainly are parties available only to established couples (and often, also single ladies), this is not the only option: Only half of our participants went with a romantic partner, 15% women and 22% men went solo, and the rest with friends or casual lovers.

Sexual activity. Contrary to popular belief, play parties are not all orgies; in fact, a quarter of the sample reported not engaging in activity that could lead to an orgasm; 27% reported engaging in some type of kink, but no genital contact whatsoever. But even among the 75% who did get laid, only 20% had a fivesome or more; 57% had a threesome and 30% had a foursome. While 10% of people didn’t do anything sexual or kinky at the party and 20% played only with the partner/s that they went to the party with, play parties are, as you may imagine, a place to meet new and casual partners: Of those with at least one sexual partner, 72% hooked up with a casual partner, and 51% hooked up with someone they just met that night.

Orgasm. Was the sex good? Well, of those who had some type of sexual activity that could’ve led to an orgasm, two thirds had at least one orgasm. And guess what? While there is a huge orgasm gap in the world in general, there was absolutely no gender difference in orgasm rates in our sample!

Same-sex activity. Although most of the sample was not gay-identified, rates of same-sex behavior were quite high at the most recent play party: Among those who had at least one sexual partner at their last play party, 50% of women and 24% of men reported at least one same-sex partner; 7% of each reported at least one trans/genderqueer partner.

Condom use. Condoms were pretty common: 78% participants said condoms were provided at the party, 57% brought their own, and 44% said there were party rules regarding condom use. Of the people who had vaginal or anal sex at the party, 75% used a condom with all of their casual partners; 33% used a condom with all their long-term partners.

Substance use. It’s a party, so everyone is drunk or high, right? Wrong. Only half of all participants reported any alcohol use at their last party; of those who did drink, the average was a moderate 3 drinks. A quarter reported using substances other than alcohol, most often marijuana (16%); all other substances were consumed by less than 5% of the sample. The relatively low rates of substance use go along with half of all participants reporting the party had specific rules regarding moderating or entirely prohibiting alcohol/drug use.

Sexual consent. People often fear that play parties are a sexual free-for-all; places ripe for sexual assault. In direct contrast to these stereotypes, 87% of participants said they were aware of explicit party rules regarding sexual consent (often communicated via email/website, in-person at the party, or with signs posted around the venue), and 95% of people said they felt safe and their boundaries were respected; only 9% reported feeling pressured to participate in sexual activity, and 5% reported doing things they didn’t want to do.

Overall, people really enjoyed their last play party. On a scale of 1 (very negative) to 5 (very positive), over 90% of participants gave this event a 4 or a 5 (mean = 4.51). And 67% said they were 100% likely to go to a similar event in the future!

*Disclaimer: These findings are all preliminary results; they were presented at the 2016 conference of the Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality but have not been published in academic journals nor received peer review yet. Until then, take them with a grain of salt.